"Tautology" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she might think her thoughts undisturbed, wandered away over the eastern bridge, and down to the river's brink. It was a moody place; such a one as only apathetic or healthy natures (I wonder if that is tautology!) can healthfully yield to. The bank sloped steeply; a fringe of stunted aspens and willows sprang from the frozen sand: it was a sickening, airless place in summer,—it was damp and desolate now. There was a sluggish wash of water under foot, and a stretch of dreary flats behind. Belated ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... N. identity, sameness; coincidence, coalescence; convertibility; equality &c 27; selfness^, self, oneself; identification. monotony, tautology &c (repetition) 104. facsimile &c (copy) 21; homoousia: alter ego &c (similar) 17; ipsissima verba &c (exactness) 494 [Lat.]; same; self, very, one and the same; very thing, actual thing; real McCoy; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... obliged to Jornandes (de Reb. Get. c. 51, p. 688) for a short and lively picture of these lesser Goths. Gothi minores, populus immensus, cum suo Pontifice ipsoque primate Wulfila. The last words, if they are not mere tautology, imply some temporal jurisdiction.] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... Bacon (Vol. viii., p. 303.).—I had, partly from inadvertence, and partly from a belief that a tautology would be created by a recurrence to the idea of death, after the words "mortis terrore carentem," in the preceding line, understood the verse in question to mean, "which regards length of life as the last of Nature's gifts." On reconsideration, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... different words? and why should we be more lenient to the parrot-painter who has learned one lesson from the page of nature, and keeps stammering it out with eternal repetition without turning the leaf? Is it less tautology to describe a thing over and over again with lines, than it is with words? The teaching of nature is as varied and infinite as it is constant; and the duty of the painter is to watch for every one of her lessons, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... intellectualist theory of Induction has understood. All have aimed at exhaustiveness, and imagined that if it could be attained, inductive reasoning would be rendered sound, and not impossible. Their ideal 'cause' was the totality of reality, identified with its 'effect,' in a meaningless tautology. Nothing but voluntarism can enable logicians to see that our actual procedure in knowing is the reverse of this, that causal explanation is the analysis of a continuum, and that 'phenomena,' 'events,' 'effects,' and 'causes' ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... of which he was laid up with eight sword-wounds—things of which it is itself full, with the appurtenant combats on sea and land and in private houses, and all sorts of other divertisements (he uses the word himself of himself) including a very agreeable ghost-host—a ghost quite free from the tautology and grandiloquence which ghosts too often affect, though not so poetical as Fletcher's. "They told me you were dead," says his guest and interlocutor, consciously or unconsciously quoting the Anthology. "So I am," quoth the ghost sturdily. But he wants, as they ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... or, as it may be rendered, covereth all things. This seems to be more agreeable to the context; for otherwise it would mean the same as endureth all things, in the latter clause of the verse, and thus make a tautology; while it leaves a deficiency in the description, indicated by the passage in Peter, "Charity shall cover the multitude of sins." "Charity will draw a vail over the faults of others, so far as is consistent with duty." What trait of character can be more amiable and lovely? It is the genuine ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... said: No matter if it were a mere tautology: it required repetition to make this nation, so steeped in crime against humanity, understand. She then spoke of the awful lie of this nation, in naming itself Civilized, Republican, Christian, while it had made barter of men ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... baths may be made available, and the indications for which are furnished by so great a number of pathological conditions, that omitting special reference to them would have led to a great deal of tautology in ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... divine tautology, The sunset's mighty mystery Again has traced the scroll-like west With hieroglyphs of burning gold: Forever new, forever ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... Tautology, or a continued repetition of the same word, is a disagreeable and inelegant fault in writing, as: "If John will come home, we will all come, but if he fails to come, we will not come ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... only say it is not of the most vital importance. Thackeray was a Titan—well, look at his slipshod style in places, his careless grammar, his constant tautology. He knew better, and he could have done better, and it would have been well if he had, I don't deny it; but his work would not have been a scrap more vital, nor he himself the greater. I have seen ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... that accompaniment only of sin and damnable blasphemy! In comparison with this insanity, Bucer, impudent fellow that he is, will appear modest, for he (on Matth. xxvi.), by an explanation very preposterous, or rather, an inept and stupid tautology, takes hell in the creed to mean the tomb. Of the Anglican sectaries, some are wont to adhere to their idol, Calvin, others to their great master, Bucer; some also murmur in an undertone against this article, wishing that it may be quietly ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... had just got under way. Willoughby was trying to yoke Dixon's leaders, while Dixon, owing to his screwmatics, could do nothing but sit on his horse, cursing with wearisome tautology, and casting glances of frantic apprehension toward the ram-paddock. His anxiety was not unreasonable, for there had just come into sight an upright speck, too small to be a horseman; and it was easy to guess who was the likeliest ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... overwhelmed. He saw the stuff he had done without veil or possible concealment, a lamentable and wretched sheaf of verbiage, worse, it seemed, than the efforts of his boyhood. He was not longer tautological, he avoided tautology with the infernal art of a leader-writer, filling his wind bags and mincing words as if he had been a trained journalist on the staff of the Daily Post. There seemed all the matter of an insufferable tragedy ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... precision. Existence, on the other hand, is distinguished from essence, by the superinduction of reality. Thus we speak of the essence, and essential properties of a circle; but we do not therefore assert, that any thing, which really exists, is mathematically circular. Thus too, without any tautology we contend for the existence of the Supreme Being; that is, for a reality correspondent to the idea. There is, next, a secondary use of the word essence, in which it signifies the point or ground ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... I adore you! I worship you!" poured forth young Grindley, forgetful of all Miss Appleyard had ever told him concerning the folly of tautology. ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... useless to wish it different as to wish the past different. "But," it will be rejoined, "our wishes can cause the future, sometimes, to be different from what it would be if they did not exist, and they can have no such effect upon the past." This, again, is a mere tautology. An effect being defined as something subsequent to its cause, obviously we can have no effect upon the past. But that does not mean that the past would not have been different if our present wishes had been ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... for—she did not know what she was saying—for wicked young men. Above all things it seemed necessary to be in a passion; to be as irritated and bitter against him as possible. The copiousness of her vocabulary of abuse surprised herself, and she did not shrink from tautology. She only stopped at last for want of breath, and even then, as though she knew how dangerous was silence, she bemoaned herself with sobs ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... of this journal are very bad. It abounds in tautology and repetitions. Facts are sometimes inverted in the order of time; but to remedy all these defects it would have been necessary to recast the whole, which would have completely changed the character of the work. The spelling ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 1 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... generalizing, and giving you to understand the broad lie of the land: he makes you see the forest in spite of the trees. As this is our purpose, too, we shall beg leave to go with him; only adding now and again such new light as Theosophical ideas throw on it;—and for the most part, to avoid a tautology of acknowledgments, or a plethora of footnotes in the PATH presently, letting this one confession of debt serve. The learning, the pictures, the marshaling of facts, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... governments: and therefore this gross corruption is well amended in our late printed Bible. Helps, governments, are here generally taken by interpreters for two distinct officers. 6. Nor, finally, can the teaching elder here be meant; for that were to make a needless and absurd tautology, the teacher being formerly mentioned in this same verse. Consequently, by governments here, what can be intended, but such a kind of officer in the church as hath rule and government therein, distinct from all governors forementioned? And doth ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... Life and Works of Chatterton gave Scott an opportunity to discuss the characteristics of Middle-English poetry, but his general thesis, that the Rowley poems exhibit graces and refinements which are in marked contrast to the tenuity of idea and tautology of expression found in genuine works of the period, is supported by an argument which seems to be based on a characterization of the romances rather than on a close acquaintance with other Middle-English ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... and in the Wortley Montagu, the Sultan relents at an early opportunity, the stories, as in Galland, continuing only as an amusement. I have been careful to preserve the balanced sentences with which the tales open; the tautology and the prose- rhyme serving to attract attention, e. g., "In days of yore and in times long gone before there was a King," etc.; in England where we strive not to waste words this becomes "Once upon a time." The closings ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... that the principle of valuation employed in column nine is, not the quantity of producing labor, but the quantity of labor commanded. Now, if it is, then the result is childish tautology, as being identical with the premises. For it is already introduced into the premises as one of the conditions of the case Alpha (namely, into column two), that twelve quarters of corn shall command the labor of one man; which ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... — N. identity, sameness; coincidence, coalescence; convertibility; equality &c. 27; selfness[obs3], self, oneself; identification. monotony, tautology &c. (repetition) 104. facsimile &c. (copy) 21; homoousia: alter ego &c. (similar) 17[obs3]; ipsissima verba &c. (exactness) 494[Lat]; same; self, very , one and the same; very thing, actual thing; real McCoy; no other; one and only; in the flesh. V. be identical &c. adj.; coincide, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Revolution and the Bill of Rights—and finally, whether with too much or too little violence to the principles of the ancient constitution—all these topics, we say, would, if we were so inclined, supply us, as they have supplied Mr. Macaulay, with abundant opportunities of grave tautology and commonplace; but we decline to raise sham debates on points where there is no contest. We can have little historic difference, properly so called, with one who has no historical difference on the main facts with anybody else: instead, then, of pretending to treat ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... in every country. He must exert more than ordinary activity. The attorney's clerk I also thought out of his province. I dare believe that he finds cultivating his own land not half so easy a task as he formerly found that of stringing together volumes of tautology to encumber, or convey away, that of his neighbour. Hubbard's farm, and Kelly's also, deserve regard, from being better managed than most of the others. The people here complain sadly of a destructive grub which destroys ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... questions now brought out the whole mystery respecting Waverley's deliverance from the bondage in which he left Cairnvreckan. Never did music sound sweeter to an amateur, than the drowsy tautology, with which old Janet detailed every circumstance, thrilled upon the ears of Waverley. But my reader is not a lover, and I must spare his patience, by attempting to condense within reasonable compass the narrative ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... upon us: Christ have mercy upon us: Lord have mercy upon us'.) seemeth an affected tautology without any special cause or order here; and the Lord's Prayer is annexed that was before recited, and yet the next words are again but a repetition of the aforesaid oft repeated general ('O Lord, shew ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... say that a biographer unconsciously writes his autobiography. That is not tautology. Some one writing of the late Frank N. Mayer said: "The plant hunter and explorer is the unsung Columbus of horticulture." Our next speaker was the one who wrote that in Mr. Meyer's biography. We all recognize it as ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... agreeable hour or so in a railway train, and the announcement (also made on the cover) that it is "an entirely new novel, now published for the first time," may call their attention to the value, in art as well as politics, of emphatic tautology. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... to digest, and to throw it into its present form, it may, notwithstanding, appear crude and incorrect; but, having endeavored to be plain and explicit in all the devises, even at the expense of prolixity, perhaps of tautology, I hope and trust that no disputes will arise concerning them. But if, contrary to expectation, the case should be otherwise, from the want of legal expressions, or the usual technical terms, or because too much or too little has been said ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Note, this is no tautology of the historian; but the latter paragraph is a mere recitation of the first, viz. reference to the time when he was translated into the number of Saints and Martyrs: "quando in divorum ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... war." 3. "A cessation, or breathing-time, from war, although short, will be agreeable." 4. "Supply 'may be', and translate, 'and that there may be a short breathing-time from the battle;' although this last involves some tautology ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... habitual tautology and grave absurdity, Master Potts is, nevertheless, a faithful and accurate chronicler, and we owe his memory somewhat for furnishing us with so elaborate a report of what took place on this trial, and giving us, "in their own country terms," the examinations of the ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... a Gilbertian tone about the whole piece which I should be rather more surprised at being the first to note, so far as I know, if I were not pretty well prepared to find that the study of the average dramatic critic is not much in Peacock. The choric trochees (which by the way is a tautology) are of the highest excellence, especially ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... tautology and hammering reiteration the following can scarcely be surpassed. The Traveller is speaking of the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Dr. Beaumont was now their superior only in goodness and wisdom; a superiority more easily endured than that created by affluence or a larger share of temporal indulgencies. Many too began to be weary of the tautology and confusion of their arbitrary services, which, depending upon the humour, or (as they proudly called it) the inspiration of their minister, often wearied instead of gratifying the curiosity of the hearers. They recollected the Liturgy of the Church of England ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the world," he moralized in a letter to the Bishop, "who care for religion. 'Tis necessary, therefore, for us to take the greater heed for Christianity. We must lose our all, if need be, in order to do our duty; in fine," added he, with his usual tautology, "it is right that a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... document, for it would be difficult to cite any political document in the annals of mankind that was so simple and lucid in expression. There is nothing Johnsonese about its style. Every word is a word of plain speech, the ordinary meaning of which even the man in the street knows. No tautology is to be found and no attempt at ornate expression. It is a model of simplicity, and as it flows through the reaches of history it will always excite the admiration of those who love clarity and not rhetorical excesses. One can say of it as Horace ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... tending to promote its own persistence. But, in the same note, I also remarked that, strictly speaking, I recognize no distinction between appetite and desire. For whether a man be conscious of his appetite or not, it remains one and the same appetite. Thus, in order to avoid the appearance of tautology, I have refrained from explaining desire by appetite; but I have take care to define it in such a manner, as to comprehend, under one head, all those endeavours of human nature, which we distinguish by the terms appetite, will, desire, or impulse. I might, indeed, have ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza |
